Louis Sebert

Mr. Speaker, I don't know if I entirely understand the question. The question is whether G Division officers, who are in the RCMP, could replace other officers within the RCMP? Either way, it's still RCMP officers, Mr. Speaker. I may have misunderstood the question. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, I can commit to reviewing the situation. I don't know whether I could really commit to having the sheriff's officers conduct the duties suggested by the Member opposite as I believe that would require a significant change of legislation. So I am prepared, certainly, to look at the overall issue, but I don't think I can make any commitment as to any certainty as to whether we would be increasing the duties that the sheriff's officers already have. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, certainly, we are always looking at new ways of being more efficient. I'm rather concerned that moving officers around in the manner suggested by the Member opposite might actually involve a greater loss. RCMP budgets or, rather, our portion of it, which is 70 per cent, has been growing exponentially over the last five or six years, but I certainly will, as I mentioned earlier, undertake to the Member opposite to look at this whole issue. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

It is some time since I've reviewed the legislation, and, in fact, I may have never reviewed the legislation. I will, however, undertake to the Member opposite that I will review the legislation. I was under the impression that we would either have to enact new legislation in the form of a police act or something along those lines to allow the sheriffs to take on these additional duties, but I will certainly undertake to look into the matter.

Mr. Speaker, I understand actually in Fort Simpson there is a solar panel system at the airport, which, admittedly it's quite small. I can't commit to entering into another pilot project at this time but I know we are considering how we can reduce the costs of power in all communities, and certainly we do want to get away from diesel.

Mr. Speaker, I believe that the energy strategy that they have looked at in the past is generic, as referred to by Member opposite and we will be willing to, of course, work with the smaller communities, but the overall policy, as is true of most policies, tends to be territorial-wide.

Mr. Speaker, that is an excellent question and --

---Laughter

-- logic would tell me that we would have to have a cap on 20 per cent on non-traditional sources of power, because the whole point of limiting it to 20 per cent was to allow there to be efficiency within the diesel system. So I imagine that 20 per cent cap would apply to all non-diesel sources of power.

Yes, certainly, Mr. Speaker, as the Energy Strategy rolls out we'll certainly be looking at options. As I said, the 20 per cent figure is just to ensure reliability in the system. As mentioned, you can go above that but it becomes incredibly expensive and involves very substantial subsidies. Thank you.

Mr. Speaker, this is all tied, of course, to the strategy to which groups will be invited to participate including NUL. So we're hoping to get a broad discussion about where the Power Corporation is going. Certainly, we are looking at more inventive ways and cheaper ways and more energy-efficient ways of delivering power to the Northwest Territories. That remains our goal.

Mr. Speaker, one of the issues with solar is that obviously it's not sunny all year round. I would anticipate that if there was a system that could have proper batteries for storage of power or if the wind was so consistent that it provided power throughout the year and we didn’t need diesel at all, we would certainly contemplate that type of system, but currently the technology is not there and it's not cheap.